I’ve had a Google Wave account for about a month now, but I hadn’t put any time into figuring out how to integrate it into my everyday life. My philosophy is that technology should fit you, not the other way around. But many times, we try to figure out how to adapt to a new technology rather than how to adapt or integrate a new technology into us. This year, my friend and I started a social media and interactive marketing business. We help small businesses put together a social media marketing campaign to build brand awareness and ultimately increase sales by bringing more customers in the door or to their website. We’re still growing and we treat it like a part-time gig right now, but we have eight clients, and even with just eight clients, it’s tough to coordinate who should be doing what for which client. We started playing with Google Wave, and we quickly found that it would be a great tool for managing projects for clients. This is what we did:
Set Up Separate Waves For Each Client
We opened a separate wave for each client. This allows us to post events coming up, tasks that need to be done, and questions or comments about the marketing strategy for the client. Google Wave has a great feature which allows you to comment on anything within the wave, so if I asked 4 separate questions in the wave, my partner could go into the wave and comment underneath each question so there was no confusion as to what question he was answering. Did I mention this can all be done in real time?
Only keep important conversations
Google Wave is like e-mail meeting instant messenger. It stores your data like an e-mail, but it looks like a running conversation on instant messenger. If you treat it like a conversation, you’ll end up with a bunch of garbled mess and the important information gets lost. Of course, you can simply treat it like a running conversation, but I am speaking in terms of using it as a project management tool. We have conversations in it, but we delete the noise and keep only the information that is important to the overall marketing strategy of the client.
Include your client
If your client is on Google Wave, share the wave with them. Sharing the wave with others is another great feature of Google Wave. Your client can see your progress, make corrections to your ideas if they don’t mesh well with their corporate brand, and include their own input on your ideas and thoughts.
Share whatever you want
You can share text files, photos, and videos. Again, it’s a great organization tool, because all of your files can be stored in one place for you and your client to reference and download at any time.
There are endless possibilities with how you can use Google Wave to improve your personal or professional life, but for me, it works best in my professional life. Maybe once the kinks are worked out and Wave becomes more mainstream, I’ll consider using it for personal conversations, but for now it makes more sense to use it as a project management tool.
